Sentinel Interferogram of the 13/11/2016 seismic event in New Zealand

Sentinel Interferogram of the 26/08/2016 seismic event in Amatrice, Italy

The Institute for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing (IAASARS), one of the three institutes of the National Observatory of Athens (NOA), recently signed an agreement with the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs to become a Regional Support Office of the UN-SPIDER Programme.

~ Published at KWOLEDGE PORTAL, on 04/06/2016

IAASARS/NOA IS GREECE UN-SPIDER REGIONAL SUPPORT OFFICE

BEYOND Final Workshop

The BEYOND project for establishing a Centre of Excellence for Earth Observation based monitoring of Natural Disasters in south-eastern Europe (http://beyond-eocenter.eu/) has reached its end. A final workshop of the project took place on May 17th, 2016, at Electra Palace, Athens.

On the 14th of April 2016 15:03:46 (UTC) an earthquake struck the island of Kyushu in Japan (Mw 6.0). This event was followed by a larger one (Mw 7.0) on the 15th of April 2016 16:25:06 (UTC). Both seismic events took place close to the city of Kumamoto and had about the same centroid depth (~12km).
BEYOND acquired a set of Sentinel-1 TOPSAR Images from the ascending mode. An image over the inflicted area was acquired on the 8th of April 2016 and a second one on the 20th of April 2016.

ATLAS UAV NOA Training Program

ALTUS LSA successfully delivered the ATLAS 8 octacopter VTOL UAV and completed operator training for National Observatory Of Athens (N.O.A.).VTOL UAV was realized through KRIPIS – PROTEAS program and BEYOND Program is benefited by its operational activity.

Within the BEYOND project, a first version of BEYOND Collaborative Ground Segment Data Site was released on January 2016 under the auspices of NOA-IAASARS. It is available to public from the following URL: http://groundsegment.space.noa.gr/
The BEYOND Collaborative Ground Segment Data Site is a web based system designed to provide EO data to users with Cataloguing, Searching, Viewing and Downloading capabilities from contemporary satellites.

ONE step...BEYOND Workshop

One of the main BEYOND dissemination events will take place at ESA premises at Frascati, on 15 October 2015. This workshop will provide an insight at the pre-operational and operational services delivered by the BEYOND Center of Excellence (http://beyond-eocenter.eu/), in support of the Copernicus, and GEO initiatives, and also the institutional stakeholders, the scientific community, the end-users and the general public.

iSPEX - Measuring air pollution with your smartphone

iSPEX-EU aims to form a network of thousands of people all over Europe that perform iSPEX measurements and provide information at locations and times that are not covered by current air pollution monitoring efforts – and we need your help!
You can be part of this major project by attending the preliminary event of the Researcher's Night 2015, organized by NOA, on Saturday 5th of September 2015, (19.00-22.00), Lofos Nymphon - Thissio in Athens. Entrance is free.

Fire Monitoring Application

Since 2007, NOA has operated an MSG-1,2,3/SEVIRI acquisition station and has been systematically archiving raw satellite images on a five- minute basis. Using these data, NOA has developed and has been sustaining a real-time, 24/7 fire hotspot detection service for effectively monitoring forest fires all over Greece in near-real time.

BSM Application

NOA has developed a fully automatic single and/or multi date processing chain that takes as input satellite images of any spatial and spectral resolution and produces precise diachronic burnt area polygons and LU/LC damage assessments over the Greek territory

BEYOND aims to maintain and expand the existing state-of-the-art interdisciplinary research potential, by Building a Centre of Excellence for Earth Observation based monitoring of Natural Disasters in south-eastern Europe, with a prospect to increase its access range to the wider Mediterranean region through the integrated cooperation with twining organizations.

Through BEYOND it will be possible to:

Set up innovative integrated observational solutions that will allow to a multitude of monitoring networks (space borne and ground-based) to operate in a complementary, unified and coordinated manner.

Create archives and databases of long series of observations and derived higher level products, and

Make these observations and products available for exploitation with the involvement of stakeholders, scientists and/or institutional users, applicable for down-streaming to their specific needs.

The research portfolio covers a broad spectrum of phenomena such as earthquakes, volcanoes, extreme weather events, fires, fire smoke and toxic gasses, emission concentrations, manmade hazards, dust storms, air quality and impacts to human health, which are described under the three research domains of BEYOND, that are:

RD1: Meteorological and human induced hazards,

RD2: Geophysical hazards, and

RD3: Atmospheric pollution and air quality, with direct and indirect effects on public health and ecosystems.

BEYOND will focus on improving the interdisciplinary approach which is necessary for disaster management, crossing the boundaries between the traditional academic disciplines, technological expertise, and research methodologies.

Moreover, through BEYOND, the National Observatory of Athens will enhance its international collaborations, via twining with high excellence partners at European level, drawing new creative perspectives in the Relevant Research Area, and allowing sustainable collaborative schemes to be formed and synergies to flourish in the future.

The collaboration schemes foreseen in BEYOND, and the coordinated operation of monitoring infrastructures, will allow to up-scale the NOA’s regional role for contribution to the ERA on disaster management, and together with the partnering organisations built in the appropriate capacity level for providing innovative solutions and information to the involved communities for sustaining the centre’s operation in future.

Building a Centre of Excellence for EO-based monitoring of Natural Disasters.